You might have heard about some of the ways that you can tweak up your website so the search engines can find you, but one of the common questions is “Which is the best SEO technique?”  Remember, SEO means “search engine optimization”.

Well, that’s like asking “What’s the best way to build a house?”  There are many different ways to do it, depending on your budget, your timeline, your location, and what your final goal is.

But just like building a house, there are good ways to do it, and not-so-good ways to do it.

Today, we’re going to have a quick look at the good ways to do it.  These techniques are referred to as “White Hat SEO,” and this normally means creating results through organic, or unpaid, methods.  The bad ways are called “Black Hat SEO” – and we aren’t going to tell you how to do them, because, well, they’re bad!

Why do you want to use White Hat methods over Black Hat?

Organic search results are preferred because they don’t manipulate the search engines into thinking the site has what the user is searching for.  Organic results are usually found from sites that are relevant to what the searcher requested, and this earns them a higher placement in the search engine results page (SERP) – and that’s a good thing.  Paid techniques often use link farms, article spinning, and keyword stuffing to build a fake positive presence in the SERPS.  The major search engines regularly look for these techniques, and will punish those that use them severely.  So instead of having a poor placement, you can end up with no placement at all.

With the building the home analogy, Black Hat techniques will tell you that they will get you the results you want, either cheaper or faster than doing it right.  But like many shortcuts, choosing this technique can often cost you big dollars in the long run.  If it’s your home, it might cost you expensive repairs.  If it’s your website, it could cost you your ranking and reputation.  Fixing your home is a whole lot easier, because you likely won’t need to start from scratch.  As well, White Hat SEO techniques ensure that the people who visit your site get the information that they were looking for.  Remember, you want to build your website for people, not search engines.

When you are looking for techniques to bring more traffic to your website, o ryou are choosing a team to deliver SEO results, ask them how they are going to do it, and what the ramifications could be.

Helping people find your website through the search engines is a great way to increase your traffic.  You can use www.rankfanatic.com to measure and analyze the results in real-time, so you can make the best choices for your website experience.